Erik believes he is clever

So let's say that you are in a monstrosity of a parking garage, similar to one in Las Vegas and you don't know where to turn.

You're on floor 5, which is color coded blue (not that you'll remember that later) near post 21H.

How do you remember these trivial details after a few hours of shopping and fun?

How about this:



Yet another easy use of the cell phone cam for practical purposes.

Feel free to use my idea in any parking garage you find, but you must give erikemery.com credit. It's only fair.

A quick note of kudos

While at the airport here in Las Vegas, I'd like to take the time to congratulate my friend Angela Batie on her graduation from Yale Divinity School yesterday.

I missed the live webcast. Although I would venture to guess that Yale Divinity School has probably shut Las Vegas out of their on-line feed because they don't want anyone in Sin City polluting their bandwidth.

Anyway, congratulations are in order!

Jubilee

Last night Mary and I crossed another "Vegas experience" off the list -- the Jubilee topless revue that has been running 25 years now.

This was one of those "classic" Vegas showgirl numbers with--as the ads say--hundreds of thousands of rhinestones covering hardly anything.

It would be hard to overstate how utterly ridiculous this production was. How much time and money and thought went into something so ... bad. Admittedly, at the beginning there was a certain kitch factor. There were lots of scantily-clad dancers (the topless dancers were expected, but the men in thongs and cod pieces were a surprise to this theater-goer) parading around in funny hats.

(My favorite hat was about 3 feet in diameter and about 4 feet tall. It looked like they created the hat by cutting off 4 foot sections of Mr. Snuffleupagus' trunk, dying the sections either pink or yellow, and then attaching them to the poor head of a dancer who must have had 10 pounds of Muppet trunk on her head.)

With all that, the show started kind of fun but it quickly got boring and incredulously bad.

The second act was a "lesson in ancient history" when we revisited Samson and Delilah. It took awhile for what I was actually sinking but, but at some point when Samson is fawning over Delilah, I couldn't help but think, "Did the producers really think that staging a Bible story with topless dancers was a good idea?" They must have figured that out of the number of people who could tell you that Samson and Delilah is a Bible story, most of them wouldn't be at a topless revue to start with.

It went from weird to worse.

Act IV was their take on the sinking of the Titanic. The story ended, inexplicably, with a full chorus line doing high kicks and singing Yankee Doodle Dandy. Because that made a lot of sense. Fellas, it was a British ship!

Mary and I quickly scooted after that.

What a very odd theatrical experience. Next time I'm here, I'm going to skip the Vintage Vegas thing and just go to "O" at the Bellagio.

Desert Dawn

I see I've failed to mention why I'm in Vegas. First, I've been celebrating the pending wedding of a Mr. Caleb Bartley, one fellow senior year roommate from Carleton '02. Other fellow roommate was Mr. Joe Kreuser, infrequent blogger at hordesofkreuser, and best man for the pending ceremonies.

As it happens, out of the five guys here for the bachelor party weekend, I was the only guy who'd been here before, so I was the unofficial tour guide. It's been an awesome weekend, although not a little expensive. Ah well, such is Vegas.

I should note that the last two days I've seen dawn. The first morning, Saturday morning, it was unintentional. The drapes were left open accidentally and the three guys in the room all woke up at the same time, as our Flamingo room faced east, directly into the rising sun. We struggled mightily to get those drapes closed.

And last night we partied all night long and got back at dawn. So, two nights in Vegas, two dawns. I do not expect that trend to continue.

With the bachelor party behind me, Mary's here now and we're on our way out again after a pitstop back at the room.

Livin' la vida loca ... and all that jazz.

Sleepy Lions

Great times so far in Vegas.

Walked past many things today and saw the sights ... late night last night, but out by 11 this morning. For now, here's the MGM lion sleeping on top of the pedestrian walkway.

He's a biggggggg cat.

Vegas Weekend

Every time I've been to Vegas, it's been mid-week, to make things cheaper across the board. Not this time. Memorial Day weekend in the craziest place on earth (although the Manhattan Macy's on the day after Thanksgiving last year was probably good prep).

Still, should be good fun. I'll try to keep things posted over the weekend as events warrant.

While I'm gone, though, hop over to Exit133 and check out the Community Gardens video. I spent some good times editing it this week and had a lot of fun with it.

Hopefully, more vids in the future!

Downtown Galaxy Theater?

Dan Voepel has an interesting scoop from the Vegas (where my sister is now and I will be Friday).

He (and Krista) and there for the International Council of Shopping Centers annual conference and reports that Galaxy Theaters is telling him "the stars have aligned now to make downtown Tacoma viable for a multiscreen theater."

Wow! Big news.

Of course, there's a big question, which is, "What does that mean for the Grand, the only urban movie theater right now?" I think it's only going to mean good things.

If people will go downtown to see Pirates of the Caribbean, then seeing an art film downtown a few weeks later isn't as scary anymore.

And it's not like the current Galaxy plays many "Grand Cinema" movies. While I was at the Grand, there was a narrow field of overlap where the Galaxy and the Grand were in competition for the same film--Pride and Prejudice (Galaxy got it), Thank You For Smoking (Grand got it), House of Flying Daggers (Galaxy), Brokeback Mountain (Grand).

But usually the markets are totally different.

The big winner is downtown. The Grand has averaged about 100,000 tickets sold a year since it got popular in 2001. But a multiplex, even a 6-screener like the current Galaxy, is going to do substantially higher numbers than that. It will be a boon to restaurants in the area and will be yet another incentive for the neighboring stores to keep their doors open late (as the Two Vaults does next to the Grand).

But still, big news!

Big Yellow [Hybrid] Taxis

'Don't it always seem to go, like you don't what you got till it's gone ...'

... or something like that. Earlier this year I linked to an idea of converting taxis to hybrids to cut down on pollution. It's an easy step to curb greenhouse gases but it also mandates a larger market for hybrid technology that will further innovation.

So I'm very happy to link again to Bloomberg's announcement that New York will start mandating that all new taxis in the next five years must be hybrids as they retire the old taxis (Crown Victorias).

Congrats to the Big Apple. I hope other large cities (LA, I'm looking at you) give this a shot. It's very easy to mandate and in cities with high volumes of taxis it makes a whole heck of a lot of sense.

Unfortunately here in Tacoma we have about 5 taxis total, so I'm not sure it would do much good here. But maybe someday ... when we have ten.

Ack! Cutty Sark fire!

The world's only surviving clipper ship was on fire earlier today in London near the Prime Meridian.

I got to see the ship in 2000. I hope she survived.

Larry Flynt and Jerry Falwell

If you want to read an absolutely surprising and bizarre piece, check out "My friend, Jerry Falwell" by Larry Flynt. It's ... surprising and bizarre considering that the leader of the "Moral Majority" and the creator of Hustler might be friends. But apparently they were. Here's my favorite part:

Soon after that episode, I was in my office in Beverly Hills, and out of nowhere my secretary buzzes me, saying, "Jerry Falwell is here to see you." I was shocked, but I said, "Send him in." We talked for two hours, with the latest issues of Hustler neatly stacked on my desk in front of him. He suggested that we go around the country debating, and I agreed. We went to colleges, debating moral issues and 1st Amendment issues — what's "proper," what's not and why.

In the years that followed and up until his death, he'd come to see me every time he was in California. We'd have interesting philosophical conversations. We'd exchange personal Christmas cards. He'd show me pictures of his grandchildren. I was with him in Florida once when he complained about his health and his weight, so I suggested that he go on a diet that had worked for me. I faxed a copy to his wife when I got back home.

Read on!

"Tampopo"

I went to a Japanese movie at Carleton once called Tampopo that was bizarre, weird, and totally hilarious.

It bills itself as a "Japanese noodle Western" and uses the structure of a spaghetti Western to tell a story about food. Specifically, a John Wayne type who tries to help a woman (Tampopo) create the perfect noodle house. It is so detailed and so exact in its quest for perfect noodles that it becomes universal.

But it wanders along the way, following different stories with unrelated characters, every single one involving food (right down to the last shot of a nursing mother).

Roger Ebert called it "one of those utterly original movies that seems to exist in no known category" and gave it 4 out of 4 stars (by the way, it looks like he's getting back in to reviewing again after a year's hiatus!)

Watching it again last night was still a lot of fun. It truly is weird, so if you try it, don't say I didn't warn you. But thanks to Stadium Video I was happy to find a copy and enjoy it on a quiet Saturday night (literally quiet. I've been keeping my voice down because of a bad cough).

Doubleshot Again

I haven't updated the Doubleshot Festival, but Friday was a lot of fun. My ten minute play got a fun cast and a good reception from the audience. I am amazed that they were able to take a play and make it work between 8:30 am and the first curtain at 7:00 that night. My hat is definitely off.

The event was well attended and I was very happy to have been a part. Looking forward to next year!

That was quick

Well, not that quick. I was pretty pleased to get most of the play I had to write finished by 1:00 am last night and I zonked out immediately after. I still have until 8:00 to e-mail it in, so I'm still doing a little bit of tweaking and work as needed.

Last night I was assigned a director--one Marilyn Bennett--as well as a number of cast members (4) and then we drew names out of a hat for who would be in the cast.

And then we were given a "prompt" which was Take Me To The Water, something that I wrestled with for a good long time. I think if you watch my play tonight (shows start tonight at 7 and 9 at Rausch Auditorium at UPS!) you'll have to imagine a very metaphorical water.

The play is complete! Hope to see you tonight!

Farmers Market!

Today's the kickoff for the farmers market! This is from earlier today during setup. But right now it's hopping with people. See you down there!

Doubleshot Theatre

If you're not familiar with the Doubleshot Festival happening Friday and Saturday, here's the scoop. On Friday and Saturday 7 plays will be staged each day that were conceived, written, and then produced within 24 hours.

Think the Grand's 72-Hour Film Competition but faster and with theater (by the way, the "Best Of" the competition will be shown Saturday at the Grand at noon and 11 pm, and I'm happy to say that Tintinnabulation will be a part of it!)

I am also happy to say that I'll be participating in the Doubleshot Festival as a writer. Tomorrow night I'll be assigned a director and find out who's going to be in my cast. By 8:00 am, Friday, I have to have the script to the director, who will work with the actors to get it on-stage by the 7:00 pm show Friday night (it will be followed by a 9:00 show as well). And then the whole thing will be repeated from Friday to Saturday, but fortunately, I have the luxury of being an audience member by that point.

So I'll be doing a lot of late-night writing tomorrow night. I might even post some of my dazed thoughts here if you're lucky (or unlucky, perhaps).

Like the film competition, this is a good excuse to get some creative work done. After you make a movie in a weekend you start to think: why don't I do this more often? I'm guessing the same thought will occur after tomorrow night ... "why don't I do this more often?"

Of course, by the weekend when I'm poorly rested and half-awake I'll probably have a much better answer to that question.

More coverage of the Doubleshot Theatre Festival from Rosemary at the Trib here.

Everyone's Doing It ... So Should Tacoma

Federal Way has put an annexation bid on the ballot for August. They could add as much as 20,000 residents.

Tacoma's got to step up to the plate. Let's go guys! Tacoma = "Point Defiance to 512!"

More than just "Spew"

I discovered a thread in the Exit133 forums asking "when did the Volcano go on-line for real?" and "Am I the last person to notice this?"

No, jenyum, you're not, because it's news to me, too. The "under construction" sign has come down and www.weeklyvolcano.com is functioning and operational.

So if you check the Weekly Volcano's blog -- named "Spew" -- you'll be happy to hear they have the rest of their content on-line as well.

I got to know the Volcano folks while I was at the Grand and I appreciate all the paper does for the community and the arts. They're good peeps. Congrats to the Volcano on expanding their reach!

U.P.'s Town Center

University Place is getting ready to break ground this summer on their new, higher density "downtown" area off of Bridgeport.

It's a great project and I am all for increasing density wherever we can. As I've noted many times before, however, it wouldn't be necessary to build if UP were part of Tacoma and annexed into the city.

But since that isn't likely to happen anytime soon, big kudos to them for creating a pedestrian friendly core.

Tacoma City Marathon - Tomorrow!

To the 1,400 runners competing in tomorrow's marathon, half-marathon, or 10K, my hat is off to you. Actually, my hat will be hanging on my bedpost because your marathon is at 7:00 in the morning and I'm going to be sawing logs like a normal person.

But good luck. Have fun. Thanks for putting Tacoma on the map by racing in this successful event. I hope you do it for years to come.

But I'm staying put.

More 72-Hour Film at Exit133

Exit133 has posted two more films from the film competition--"South 5," which won the Audience Award Thursday as well as "Five Dollar Watch," a fun entry set at Blackwater.

Glad to see Tacoma filmmakers taking advantage of the Internet!

Hollywood Movies

I've seen not a small amount of movies recently. Starting with the 33 Thursday night at the Grand's 72 Hour Film Competition, of course. But also three Hollywood Movies. My thoughts below.

Spiderman 3--This movie got pretty mixed reviews, and I would say deservedly so. It just wasn't that good. But it wasn't that bad either. I enjoyed a lot of it, if not most of it, but it just didn't all come together. I'm not even sure it was the multi-villain thing that hurt it so much. It's hard to say, but it just didn't totally work. Spiderman 2 was a coup, just an awesome movie in almost every way. And 3 was definitely better than 1. But it was just ... ok. That said, they nailed Venom. He was just as freaky as he was in the comic books.

Lucky You--pretty damn bad. Eric Bana and Drew Barrymore were both pretty bad in this one. The poker was fun but there wasn't enough poker. Best thing in the movie was Robert Duvall, who is frequently cast as the best thing in the movie, it seems. Really not that good at all.

The Ex--charming and fun, it's not laugh a minute, but the story is strong enough it doesn't have to be. The characters are good, Amanda Peet and Zach Braff make a good couple, and Jason Bateman is always fun to watch. I thought this was pretty good. Also, Charles Grodin is in it. Man, he's aged quickly. He's like the Anti Dick Clark. Good supporting cast bits from Amy Poehler and Fred Armisen from SNL, too.

"Tintinnabulation" Wins Twice!

Yahoo! "Tintinnabulation" -- the film produced by the Horatio and our friends over at Exit133 -- won two awards tonight at the Grand's 72-Hour Film Competition, Best Use of Location and Best Use of the Action Shot.

The requirements for the film, again, were:

• Use a Tacoma landmark
• Use a hat or a cap
• Use the line "What we have here is a failure to communicate."
• And something has to be thrown, tossed, or dropped.

Thanks to the acting pair of Aaron and Jenny Jacobs and some help from friends around town, we ended up with a fun film.

Enjoy!



Full winners list can be found at Exit133.

Gig Harbor, The Second Harry-est Town in America?

I'm all about buying local and stuff, but sometimes interesting things come along on-line (and anyways, Amazon is kind of local, right?).

Amazon.com will give $5,000 to a charity in the town with the most Harry Potter pre-orders per capita. They have a list of the top 100 towns that are in the running right now, with Falls Church, VA at the top. But our fair Gig Harbor weighs in at #2!

Close behind is Issaquah, Snohomish, and Woodinville at 7, 8, and 9.

Of course, seeing that's Gig Harbor, I have to point out that if Harry kissed Cho at Gig Harbor High instead of Hogwarts, you can bet the Dursley's would have been called about the matter.

Tintinnabulation

I'll get a Google Video of my movie from the 72-Hour Film Competition up Friday so that the world may watch. But not till Friday, because otherwise some of y'all might not come see all the films Thursday. And that just wouldn't be fair.

Happy Birthday, Exit133

Today marks Exit133's 2nd birthday. Congrats to Derek and all the readers.

It also reminds me that erikemery.com turned 2 this month (May 4 if you want to be specific) when I posted a review of Revenge of the Sith and Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat. In my first year of the blog I posted about 60,000 words. This past year it was close to 90,000 which is basically a novel, had I opted to write on of those instead.

I have dropped back a bit in posts and I'll try to pick it up again soon. But it's been crazy busy! This weekend it was the 72-Hour Film Competition. Next week I'll be writing a 10-minute play for the Doubleshot Festival (more on that later, but suffice to say, you should go) and staging it within 24 hours.

After that it's Vegas for Memorial Day. (Vegas, baby, Vegas!)

Crazy times here in T-Town.

72 Hours and the clock is ticking

In 2005 I came up with a new program at the Grand--the 72 Hour Film Competition, which attracted 11 teams of filmmakers (counting 3 staff films). The feeling on the sidewalk after the screening of the films was electric. It played to a packed house of 111 at the Grand.

In 2006, we took it bigger and moved the screening to the Rialto. 26 films, 500+ people for the screening, and then they got to be shown on Click! after that.

So this year, as I'm no longer at the Grand, I got the unique opportunity to compete in the event I created. I got my criteria Thursday night, brainstormed with the actors that night, and got the 4 page script out during lunch Friday.

Worked Saturday morning trying to secure a location to shoot, and we didn't get started until about 2. We shot until about 5:30 (after which I darted over to the SOTA Auction, which was a lot of fun). And then Sunday ... Sunday was about 11 hours of editing, with a break for picking up a couple extra shots.

After going through it, my hat is off to the filmmakers who competed before. It's a hard weekend. I got my film in 9 minutes before the deadline and I'll be at Thursday's screening at the Rialto to see all 30+ films.

You should come! Films start promptly at 7:00, and the cost is $10 ($8 if you're not a member). Vote for "Tintinnabulation" if you like it for the Audience Favorite. (If you had Mr. Dudas with me freshman year at Bellarmine, by the way, you might recognize Tintinnabulation as one of our infamous Dudas words.)

Anyway, it's a really really fun night. Come cheer on Tacoma's filmmakers!

"Lost" Won't Wander

Lost will air three 16-episode seasons to end their show. (It works out to be like 2.5 seasons if they were of the normal length.)

My hunch is those will be Feb - May kind of seasons, where they are all in a row with no breaks.

It's a pretty big deal that a major and highly lucrative television show has been given its end date with so much time left. It makes perfect sense for the show, but still, big kudos to ABC.

I'll be with them right till the end!

Thanks to Joe for letting me know.

Cue the 253

I just want to give a shout out to the Tribune for the cover of the Go! in today's paper. If you have a chance to find one, I think it's worth 35 cents.

Who knew our area code looked so good when spelled out with pool balls. I'm surprised one of our pool halls hasn't thought of it yet.

Good job, guys!

An "involuntary assignment" for GH Dean

Keith Nelson, who had been Dean of Students at Gig Harbor High, was given an "involuntary assignment" by a school district administrator. Although they school district won't say whether this was related to the video tape he showed to one of the parents. Right.

There was this interesting piece in the Tribune update this evening about the story:

Nelson said that students are wrong to call what he did discrimination against homosexuals.

"The real story is this -- do parents have the right to know what happens at school? And do parents have the right to know what type of activities their child is involved in at school? Of course they do," he wrote in the e-mail.

I actually am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt the first part. Reading between the lines, we can probably assume that homosexuality was alluded to as something the parents of the girl would want to be notified of (since they pulled her out of school for it and said they were going to send her to a camp to try to fix her, which is a whole other problem, but I can get to that later).

Nelson, whether he agreed with the parents' view of homosexuality or not, complied with what the parents asked him to do because he has said at least twice now that he will enforce behavior on behalf of the parents. He says that above, when he says that parents have a right to know what their children are up to at school. And he said that in the first article:

“They’re paying good money for us to make their kids good citizens,” he said. “Whatever that means to the parents, I’ll do it.”

This is the problem. I went through the whole thing below but since Mr. Nelson reiterates it ... you can't enforce the different moral standards of different parents.

This parent wants their child to wear a burqa, that parent doesn't want their child holding hands with a girl, this parent wants their child to recycle, and on and on and on.

Anyway ... I still have concerns about the cameras all over the schools, but after this incident I hope GH will be much more careful with how they are used.

Art and Transit DO mix

If you don't believe me, then go to Stockholm. ... And take me with you, because I haven't been there before.

As a Swede (mostly, at least) I'm impressed that the ol' country has such an awesome blend of transit and art. I mean look at those stations. You can see more of them on Wikipedia as well as this page of photo here.

I'm pretty slack-jawed. Subway stops with original bedrock exposed, art all over ... it's pretty awesome. I'm looking to you Pierce and Sound Transit!